The Job-Ready Guide

How to Set Yourself Up for Career Success

Anastasia de Waal

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749483265
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

To get the career you want, you need to be job-ready. This is your all-in-one guide to understanding what employers want and how to prepare yourself with a personal career plan. From gaining work experience, to mastering essential skills and acing the application process, The Job-Ready Guide is a complete resource for standing out from the crowd and getting a job offer. It shows you how to build a strong CV, write an impressive cover letter, excel at interviews, and cultivate the professionalism that employers want.Moving from education into the workplace can be a challenge: the world of work demands skills that you may never have had to truly use - or think about - before. The Job-Ready Guide will help you to boost your employability, covering everything you need to prepare for and start a successful career. You'll be able to conduct a systematic job search, learn how to network and develop a personal brand online, as well as hone valuable skills including leadership, teamwork, creativity and problem-solving. A highly practical, hands-on guide, this book is packed with useful features, including interactive exercises to help you in your real life; insider advice from employers; and tips from professionals at different stages in their careers who reveal 'what they wish they'd known'.

Part One

Setting yourself up for success

1. 01 CV building
2. 02 Career planning
3. 03 Work experience and internships
4. 04 Further study

01

CV building

CV building is about identifying and honing transferable skills, maximizing what you can get out of your studies and seeking out additional opportunities to build up the attributes valued by employers.

It’s never too early to be building up a strong CV, and in this chapter we’ll be looking at how to get ahead of the game before you get to the point of applying for jobs. We’ll work through 10 basic steps that you can implement while you’re still studying, showing you how they pave the way for putting together a strong CV. If you’re reading this at the end of your studies, and you are at the point of applying for jobs, don’t worry: there is still plenty you can do to shore up your best possible CV. Going through the suggestions on how to strengthen your profile will help you to draw out relevant skills and experience, and present your record as effectively as possible.

We’ll look at the specifics of how to compile and format the CV you submit to employers in Chapter 14. Our focus in this chapter is on what makes for, and how to prepare, persuasive ‘material’ to build a strong CV.

Linking your studies and wider experiences to your future – and potential – in the workplace lies at the heart of CV building. When we talk about strengthening your CV, therefore, we’re talking about building up the skills and experience that will help you to succeed once you get into the industry you choose. In other words, CV building isn’t a superficial exercise about what you can put down on paper, and it isn’t even simply about coming up with content that will get your CV to the top of an employer’s pile. Building a strong CV is about strengthening you as a candidate by identifying, fostering and making the most of opportunities and preparing you for a successful transition to the workplace.

Planning your CV: an overview

Let’s start by imagining that your dream job has come up, and the employer is about to go through your CV. The basic elements your CV will cover are:

• your education and qualifications;
• your workplace experience (including paid, voluntary and unpaid work experience);
• information on your referees.

You’ll also likely include references to:

• skills;
• achievements;
• extracurricular activities/interests.

With these categories in mind, what could you include that would make you a strong candidate? Over the course of the chapter we’ll look at how to prepare for exactly that: what you can do to bolster your employability. In summary, you’ll need to:

• build a strong track record on your course;
• make the most of wider opportunities on offer at your university/college;
• seek, research and implement careers advice, from career advisers, tutors/lecturers and industry insiders;
• plan for and organize useful work experience opportunities;
• recognize and maximize the transferability of skills you are able to gain through part-time/vacation work and volunteering.

So, let’s now look at how to go about boosting your opportunities and employability, practically, by applying 10 simple steps during your studies.

1 Sketch out a draft CV and treat it as a work in progress

You’ll most likely have at least a basic form of CV, used, for example, to apply for part-time and vacation jobs. If you haven’t, taking the main CV categories outlined above, sketch out your own first draft. Treat your draft CV as a running log of the achievements, skills and experiences you gain, including everything from grades to extracurricular activities, regularly reviewing what you can add to it. The key at this stage is to simply get down all relevant information, rather than making decisions about how best to present it and what to leave out. When it comes to polishing up and perfecting your CV, you’ll have done a lot of the legwork in terms of thinking about what could go into it and will be able to focus on editing your content. Adding to your CV categories as you progress through your course won’t only help you to include everything potentially relevant; it will also help you to firmly establish a workplace-facing mindset, embedding the link between what you are doing now and your future career prospects.

2 Apply professionalism to how you approach your studies

Don’t wait until you get into the workplace to think about and implement professional habits and behaviours: start now. As well as being good practice for the future, you’ll reap the benefits right away.

• Take all your commitments seriously. Make going to all your lectures and classes non-negotiable; don’t sign up to events/societies/extra courses you probably won’t go to.
• Meet all your deadlines. Plan in enough time to complete your work and don’t leave it until the last minute to submit it; get library books back on time and avoid racking up fines.
• Aim to produce high quality work. From fully answering the specific essay question you’ve been set using the recommended reading, to practising your class presentation and thoroughly proofreading your essays, set yourself high standards and stick to them.
• Be punctual. Whether it’s a lecture, tutorial meeting or work experience, make it a priority to turn up on time.
• Work effectively with others. From pulling your weight in group work to debating respectfully with your course mates, make your interactions with others as constructive and valuable as possible.
• Keep yourself informed. Read/watch/listen to the news daily and engage in the world around you rather than studying and living in a bubble.
• Set clear boundaries between your studies and personal life. Don’t allow your social life to negatively impact on your work; be careful with your money so that, where possible, managing financial problems doesn’t distract you from your studies.

3 Prioritize your studies and maximize what you get out of them

The single most important thing you can do when building up your CV is to do your best in your studies. Whatever you’re studying, and regardless of the type of course you are doing, how you perform is going to be one of the central factors that employers judge you on. You therefore need to ensure that while broadening your experience, you don’t lose sight of the fact that your studies must always be your priority, particularly time-wise. No number of impressive work experience placements or extracurricular achievements will trump a strong and consistent performance on your course.

As well as putting in the necessary time, aim high in your studies; for example, find out about course, departmental and college/university-wide awards and prizes – and have a go. Employers will be interested in exceptional performance, but even more importantly it can be very helpful to have goals to aim for as a way to motivate yourself. Aim to maximize what you are getting out of your course, however, rather than doggedly chasing achievement for the sake of it. An outstanding grade is valuable but even more so is the process of how you achieved it – the development of your learning, knowledge and skills.

With this point in mind, also set your own benchmarks to hit, such as mastering aspects of your course that you’re struggling with, rather than writing them off. Aiming high isn’t just about trying to perform your best, it’s also about identifying your we...

Table of contents

• About the author
• Introduction
• Part One Setting yourself up for success
• 01 CV building
• 02 Career planning
• 03 Work experience and internships
• 04 Further study
• Part Two Developing job-ready skills
• 05 Leadership and teamwork
• 06 Communication skills
• 07 Problem-solving
• 08 Industry knowledge
• Part Three Looking for a job
• 09 Systematic job hunting
• 10 Understanding what employers want
• 11 Social media, personal branding and self-promotion
• 12 Networking
• 13 Budgeting and money skills
• Part Four Applying for a job
• 14 Creating a winning CV
• 15 Covering letters and application forms
• 16 Interviews
• 17 Assessment centres
• 18 Giving presentations
• 19 Getting an offer
• Part Five Starting a job
• 20 Planning and preparation
• 21 Twenty questions about your first day answered
• 22 Making a good impression and building positive relationships
• 23 Planning your next move
• Index